August 15, 2026
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HERE'S MY TAKE
Let’s skip the drama—the answer is “No.” But insofar as the question prompts us to reflect on the importance of reading, and the consequences of living in a society that reads little, it is worth a few minutes of our time.
It was the publication of David Telfer’s essay “Canada as Empire of the Odd” in the online 2067journal that got me thinking. Telfer’s argument is that a nation’s literature intertwines its history, geography, culture and ideas in a manner that stokes the imagination. “What makes literature especially potent for (national) consciousness forming is that it is among the truest records a people leaves of its inner life.”
I’m a reader; have been since childhood, averaging more than a book per week. (Not as impressive as most make it out to be—read for an hour or so a day at ~30-35 pages per hour equals almost 250 pages per week.) While my Canadian literature courses in high school and university familiarized me with Atwood, Laurence, MacLennan and Richler (with Alice Munro’s short stories and Stephen Leacock’s small-town sketches thrown in for good measure), that literature does little to frame my Canadian-ness. As I stop to think about it, I would suggest the art of the Group of Seven serves a greater, albeit also a limited, significance.
I suppose that only proves the validity of Telfer’s point. Without wading into the Canadian content debate as it expresses itself in various bureaucratic expressions of government policies and support for the arts (justified by the argument that if Canadians did not provide preferential treatment in cultivating its own arts communities, they would not exist living as we do alongside a culture behemoth ten times our size which would eradicate any Canadian distinctives), the reality is that the arts are not a resource to which we might presently turn as a fountain of inspiration for renewing Canadian consciousness and identity.
Going back to the classical tradition, the triad of truth, goodness, and beauty was used to summarize virtue and, while not explicitly a Christian formulation, many Christian social theorists have used this as a way of summarizing key biblical teachings regarding what constitutes a flourishing society. In the modern age, it is fair to say that truth (which forces us to rely primarily on cognitive functions in distinguishing it from falsehood) and goodness (which is a function of the will/volition and doing what is good and right) have taken precedence over beauty (which evokes a sense of awe and wonder that bypasses the cognitive and affects us in hard-to-describe, but yet very tangible and real ways).
Reading can contribute to all three. Primarily a cognitive activity, the assembled words align to convince our reason what might be true and why some arguments fit a situation better than others. The implications of that truth for action is also self-evident. Words themselves, especially when assembled by a skillful wordsmith in a manner that has them dance from the page into our beings, inspiring an awe at the beautiful (or conversely, a horror at its opposite, which can also be a motivator), are a contribution to beauty.
All of which brings us full circle to the question we started with: Can reading save our country? In a world of screens, snippets, and scrolling, sustained reading is occupying a shrinking place in most of our lives. I’m thankful for a discipline cultivated over decades, initiated I am sure by the bedtime stories read to me by my mother (“Just one more chapter, please! I won’t be able to sleep unless I know what happens!”).
Over the past six weeks, I have had two eye surgeries making reading mostly impossible and have a renewed appreciation for how I process information visually differently than auditory (I cannot effectively read non-fiction audiobooks; my pattern of stopping and re-reading key arguments until I absorb them doesn’t match the 30-second forward and back buttons and quickly leaves me frustrated). I understand that citing my own example reflects a sample size of one—hardly representative and from which only very limited conclusions should be drawn—but the connection between reading and thinking seems well established.
Care needs to be taken—clear and deep thinking isn’t necessarily meritorious or moral thinking. Books have been read by scoundrels as well as saints and much of the most creative thinking has been employed in service of vice rather than virtue. Without turning this into a missive critiquing Canadian literature, I can think of several examples that aren’t likely to be the catalysts for flourishing self-consciousness that I would aspire Canada to have.
But the case doesn’t require purity tests. The argument is not that good literature—written and broadly read—produces virtue and a national imagination as much as it creates the soil within which it might grow. Societies, like gardens, rarely grow healthily when the soil is neglected. A nation that stops producing good literature may find it difficult to remember, or even imagine, what it is to be a nation where truth is recognized, goodness wrestled with, and beauty encountered.
WHAT I’M READING
If it's working...stop it?
My colleague Renze Nauta recently provided a study of the success of the private sponsorship of refugees in Canada. Focusing on the experience of Syrian refugees, the study found privately sponsored refugees had significantly higher (50% vs 10%) employment rates, higher incomes and various other positive outcome metrics than government-sponsored refugees. Responding to a recent announcement that the government is cutting private sponsorship of refugees by 30%, Renze notes in an essay published this week in newcanadianmedia.ca: “Canadians are willing to help integrate refugees. They have shown that they are good at it. The government should leverage the care that Canadian citizens have shown for the world’s most vulnerable. Let’s hope that next year’s immigration plan fixes this and restores a better balance.”
Douthat's farewell essay
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat penned his farewell essay last week (which I guess now makes him a former NYT columnist—he is moving to CBS and 60 Minutes), but his farewell essay raised a few eyebrows. The gist was a columnist needs an enemy, a “primary antagonist, a specific worldview that you think needs to be challenged and critiqued.” Douthat’s lament was that these days, he was no longer sure he could distinguish the bad guys from the good guys, which, combined with the unknowns of emerging technologies, meant the best he as an opinion columnist could offer these days was illuminated questioning rather than informed opinion.
Family taxation
Making the family as the primary taxation unit for income tax was a Royal Commission recommendation published the year I was born and has been the subject of episodic debate ever since. This week, Charles Lammam reupped the argument, noting the unfairness of a family earning $120,000 with a single income earner paying almost $10K more income tax than one that earns the same total through two $60K salaries. As in all things tax-code, there are complexities to consider, which Lammam acknowledges and, in the present fiscal climate, expecting progress on this file seems a long shot. But given the affordability challenges that are faced by households, moving towards household income tax calculation, as many other countries have done, does seem a proposal worth keeping alive.
Were my parents crooks?
A New York Times story this week tells of Family and Children Services following up with an Atlanta family for allowing their six-year-old to ride his scooter unaccompanied for a quarter of a mile from a playground to their home. They understood it as fostering independence and building age-appropriate responsibility; the officials saw it as child neglect. The article outlines legislative steps, as well as research arguments being made in many states, that over-protecting kids in “worst-first” thinking can be harmful to the healthy development of children. It was a different era, to be sure, but growing up as a rural kid whose bicycle was the only form of transportation and independence (and the closest village almost two kilometres away), it is probably best that I not detail all of the adventures that were part of my upbringing until I clarify the details on the statute of limitations.
Trade predictions, anyone?
The scheduled imposition of new U.S. tariffs on August 19 has given a new focus on CUSMA negotiations, Canada-U.S. relations more broadly, and the strategies and tactics for dealing with the present American administration in the context of domestic politics on either side of the border. I’ve nothing to add besides speculation so we’ll wait for concrete steps rather than leaks and conjecture. It doesn’t take great insider knowledge, however, to realize that the greatest challenge likely to face Canada over the next few months is not so much our relationship with the United States as it is our relationship with ourselves, the different regions of the country standing to suffer/benefit very differently from the measures being discussed, and an administration south of the border more than ready to strategically utilize our divided interests to maximize their own benefit and turn Canadians against each other.
MEANINGFUL METRICS
Tolle Lege (Take up and read)
While drafting the editorial on reading, I ran a bunch of searches on publishing and reading trends in Canada, only to find a less-than-straightforward story.
Canada produces and offers far more books than it did fifty years ago, and while reading participation may have declined a bit from its peak in the nineties, BookNet Canada reports 78% of Canadian adults read or listened to at least part of a book in 2024.
Among those readers, 45% consumed 1-5 books, 29% 6-11 books, 19% 12-49 and 7% fifty or more books. (Note: here “consumed” means read at least part of the book, not necessarily completing it, and books include audiobooks).
Technology has significantly impacted the number of books published. According to Statistics Canada, in 1978 Canadian published 3,713 new titles, whereas by 1996, UNESCO was reporting 19,900 new Canadian titles and editions, a five-fold increase. There are some acknowledged inconsistencies with the data sources that prevent direct comparison, but the basic story of many more books being produced catering to an increased audience of readers over the past fifty years seems generally accepted.
TAKE IT TO-GO
The rule says you need four outs!
Charles Dickens has Mr. Bumble famously concluding “the law is an ass” and many in the baseball world confirmed that sentiment on Tuesday when it turned out the Boston Red Sox scored a run while breaking the rules, only because the Blue Jays failed to record a fourth out in the inning.
The Coles Notes version is that the Red Sox mistakenly thought there were two outs and so runners on first and third advanced without tagging up on a fly ball to center field. The ball was caught and the Jays—who correctly knew there was only one out—doubled off the runner at first. They left the field thinking there were now three outs. Baseball 101, no? But by failing to appeal the runner who had left third illegally and crossed the plate before the out was made at first, the run counted. In this case, a fourth out was required to prevent the run.
The resulting 15-minute deliberation involved a complex interpretation of multiple rules, the Supreme Baseball Court in New York, the rare invocation of Rule 5.09(c)(4), and two perplexed juries of fans.
Baseball and law have much in common. Neither runs on a clock, and both can go on at length without resolution. Baseball has a Judge (Aaron), a Counsell (Cubs manager Craig), appeals, stealing, objections and plenty of evidence for the defence. Fans even know when to “all rise.”
The Pennings household enjoys cases—in law and baseball—that provoke debate and opinionated verdicts. But I readily agree that sometimes that which is found to be legal isn’t always what provides a just outcome. A rulebook that requires an appeal and a fourth out to prevent what clearly was a run scored in violation of the rules seems irrational. Most fans seem to think this is just Exhibit 7,987 in proving Mr. Bumble right.
Look for the next edition of Insights in your inbox on Saturday, August 22.